ATLANTA - Ravens star Ray Lewis took the stand for the first time yesterday, describing a moment when "all hell broke loose" and demonstrating on a manikin some of the blows struck in the course of a vicious street fight that left two men dead. Lewis testified for the prosecution, describing how three of the companions with him early Jan. 31 took part in the brawl and that one of them afterward demonstrated to him how he had held a knife. The testimony, coming a day after Lewis pleaded guilty to misdemeanor obstruction in exchange for having felony charges against him dropped, revived Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard's faltering case against the two other men. But even if it prevents the judge from throwing out the case, it might not win a conviction.

A burglar stole a truck and used it to take 2,142 cases of cognac last Sunday from a business in Dundalk, Baltimore County Police said. At around 5 a.m. March 16, someone entered a fenced-in lot in the 7000 block of Quad Avenue through an unlocked employee entrance and took the truck, according to a police report. The person then hooked up the truck to a chassis that was carrying a cargo container, which was filled with the cases of cognac. The burglar fled the scene westbound on Quad Avenue.

A burglar stole a truck and used it to take 2,142 cases of cognac last Sunday from a business in Dundalk, Baltimore County Police said. At around 5 a.m. March 16, someone entered a fenced-in lot in the 7000 block of Quad Avenue through an unlocked employee entrance and took the truck, according to a police report. The person then hooked up the truck to a chassis that was carrying a cargo container, which was filled with the cases of cognac. The burglar fled the scene westbound on Quad Avenue.

By Mary Carole McCauley and Chris Kaltenbach and Mary Carole McCauley and Chris Kaltenbach,Mary.mccauley@baltsun.com and Chris.Kaltenbach@baltsun.com | January 20, 2010

Talk about a midnight dreary. Dozens of fans of Edgar Allan Poe were left standing out in the cold Tuesday when a mysterious nocturnal visitor didn't keep his standing date to toast the author at his Baltimore burial plot. The so-called Poe Toaster's absence yesterday for the first time in more than 60 years has renewed the decades-long fascination with the visitor's identity. It's also an ominous indication that a beloved local ritual, a cherished example of Baltimore quirkiness, might be coming to an end - a possibility that the poet's partisans hurry to deny.

MOSCOW -- Nearly every day, another grim dispatch arrives from the front. The news tells ominously of one surrender after another, from the volcano-strewn landscape of Kamchatka near the Pacific Ocean to the belching smokestacks of the Ural Mountains, 3,000 miles to the west.The flu is marching across Russia, and newspaper readers are following its path nervously. Here in the capital, a thousand miles west of the Urals, the assault is expected sometime in the next week or so, and Muscovites are throwing up the barricades, desperately trying to protect themselves.

IT MAY STILL be the self-proclaimed Le Cognac de Napoleon, but Courvoisier is definitely not just the emperor's brandy anymore. Sure, it is still the favorite of some dinner-jacketed gentlemen in wood-paneled rooms. But Courvoisier's future lies with a different, more vibrant constituency, according to Stephanie DeBartolomeo, marketing director for the brand at Allied Domecq Spirits USA in Westport, Conn. It is to these people - "young, urban adults who subscribe to hip-hop culture, the vast majority of whom are African-American" - that the company, a unit of Allied Domecq of London, has decided to appeal.

Will someone now leave roses and cognac at his grave?A mystery man who for nearly 50 years left roses and cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe died in December, according to a computer-written note found early yesterday morning at Poe's grave.The note was tucked among three roses and a bottle of Martell's cognac hand-delivered by another mystery man at Poe's grave on his 190th birthday."The gentleman who started the tradition in 1949 died from a prolonged illness this December," says Jeff Jerome, curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum.

Rene Firino Martell, 68, who engineered the $850 million sale of his family's cognac company to Seagram Co. in 1988, died of a heart attack Tuesday in Nice, France. He lived in Cognac, the small southwestern town that his family has dominated for almost three centuries. He became chairman in 1977 and was an eighth-generation descendant of Jean Martell, the wine merchant from the Isle of Jersey who founded the cognac company in 1715. By 1987, Martell, the second-largest cognac brand after Hennesey, was a household name around the world.

The big-eating holidays may be weeks away, but I'm already in training.The other night I taught the kids how to sniff cognac.This was a skill I had recently picked up during a lunch with Robert Leaute, master blender of cognacs for Remy Martin. The lunch was on a yacht, and as we bobbed in the Baltimore harbor, Leaute explained how to sniff out the subtleties of cognac, a type of brandy made from champagne grapes and distilled in the Cognac area of France. In between bobs, I took notes.I figured this ritual could come in handy as a form of after-dinne entertainment during the upcoming holiday gatherings of our clan.

YEREVAN, U.S.S.R. -- For the Soviet vineyards' eerie commingling of Bolshevism and bouquet, Edvard L. Hakopyan, the master of Armenian cognac, bears not only a Hero of Socialist Labor medal but also a great nose.The nose is serving him better than the medal nowadays as the republic of Armenia and the other viniferous bastions of the new political separatism, Moldavia and Georgia, cultivate revenge, sweet and dry, upon President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and replant the thousands of acres of wine grapes that he had plowed under in his temperance drive against Soviet alcoholism in 1985.

A longtime tribute to Edgar Allan Poe may have come to an end with the absence of the "Poe Toaster," who for more than half a century has marked the poet's birthday by laying roses and a bottle of cognac at his original grave site. This is the first time since Jan. 19, 1949 that the person, whose identity is unknown, failed to arrive, said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House. "I was very annoyed," he said. "I've been doing this since 1977, and there was no indication he wasn't going to show up," Jerome said.

By Allison Askins and Allison Askins,McClatchy-Tribune | August 8, 2007

Cool and soothing. That's what light green foods say. And in summer's heat, that's a welcome message. Light green foods such as green grapes, kiwi and honeydew also offer phytochemicals such as lutein and indoles. In green foods, you will find nutrients that might lower the risk of some cancers, help keep your eyes healthy and build strength in your bones and teeth. You also create a yummy side salad of grapes, sour cream, brown sugar and cognac, as recommended in a recipe from Honey Flow Farm, a vineyard and honey farm in Dryden, Mich.

A teenager was sentenced yesterday to 30 years in prison for killing the driver of the moving car in which he was a passenger - a man he said was as close to him as a "big brother or an uncle" - in a fatal shooting that his lawyer blamed on a mind-bending mix of drugs and cognac. Ervin Demontray Montague, 18, tearfully apologized to the family of Aaron Kirk Howard, 33, saying, "I pray my words rest on your heart." Then Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Michael E. Loney sentenced Montague to 25 years for second-degree murder and the minimum five years for use of a handgun in the killing, which occurred April 20 last year on Admiral Drive outside an Annapolis-area condominium complex.

Taciturn yet opinionated, a mysterious man in black visited the gravesite of Edgar Allan Poe in yesterday's pre-dawn darkness and left a note to accompany his usual tribute of cognac and three roses to mark the author's birth nearly 200 years ago. "The sacred memory of Poe and his final resting place is no place for French cognac," the note read. "With great reluctance but for respect for family tradition the cognac is" placed at the grave. "The memory of Poe shall live evermore!" the note concluded.

By Elizabeth Large and Elizabeth Large,Sun Restaurant Critic | December 24, 2000

Sometimes moving to larger quarters is the kiss of death for a restaurant. Not so for La Scala, which seems to be doing very well in its new location on Eastern Avenue, still in Little Italy. (It moved from rented space on High Street.) The restaurant, which is small compared with some of the bigger names in Little Italy, has a bar and a dozen or so tables downstairs. There's another dining room upstairs. The rooms have a vaguely Mediterranean air, with sunny, sponge-painted walls, exposed brick, charming sconces and rustic murals.

IT MAY STILL be the self-proclaimed Le Cognac de Napoleon, but Courvoisier is definitely not just the emperor's brandy anymore. Sure, it is still the favorite of some dinner-jacketed gentlemen in wood-paneled rooms. But Courvoisier's future lies with a different, more vibrant constituency, according to Stephanie DeBartolomeo, marketing director for the brand at Allied Domecq Spirits USA in Westport, Conn. It is to these people - "young, urban adults who subscribe to hip-hop culture, the vast majority of whom are African-American" - that the company, a unit of Allied Domecq of London, has decided to appeal.

Taciturn yet opinionated, a mysterious man in black visited the gravesite of Edgar Allan Poe in yesterday's pre-dawn darkness and left a note to accompany his usual tribute of cognac and three roses to mark the author's birth nearly 200 years ago. "The sacred memory of Poe and his final resting place is no place for French cognac," the note read. "With great reluctance but for respect for family tradition the cognac is" placed at the grave. "The memory of Poe shall live evermore!" the note concluded.

By Allison Askins and Allison Askins,McClatchy-Tribune | August 8, 2007

Cool and soothing. That's what light green foods say. And in summer's heat, that's a welcome message. Light green foods such as green grapes, kiwi and honeydew also offer phytochemicals such as lutein and indoles. In green foods, you will find nutrients that might lower the risk of some cancers, help keep your eyes healthy and build strength in your bones and teeth. You also create a yummy side salad of grapes, sour cream, brown sugar and cognac, as recommended in a recipe from Honey Flow Farm, a vineyard and honey farm in Dryden, Mich.

ATLANTA - Ravens star Ray Lewis took the stand for the first time yesterday, describing a moment when "all hell broke loose" and demonstrating on a manikin some of the blows struck in the course of a vicious street fight that left two men dead. Lewis testified for the prosecution, describing how three of the companions with him early Jan. 31 took part in the brawl and that one of them afterward demonstrated to him how he had held a knife. The testimony, coming a day after Lewis pleaded guilty to misdemeanor obstruction in exchange for having felony charges against him dropped, revived Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard's faltering case against the two other men. But even if it prevents the judge from throwing out the case, it might not win a conviction.